No Sudden MoveEverybody has a scheme, and all too often they collapse under their own weight. No Sudden Move is a crime movie set in Detroit in the year 1954. Three crooks--Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle), Ronald Russo (Benicio del Toro), and "Charley" (Kieran Culkin)--are recruited by a mobster named Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) to hold a suburban family hostage and reclaim a secret file from the boss of the father of the family, an accountant for GM named Matt Wertz (David Harbour). As expected, plans go awry, and Curt and Ronald find themselves at the center of a major conspiracy involving the future of automobiles.
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Directed by Steven Soderbergh, No Sudden Move is best viewed as an homage to classic noir crime movies of yesteryear. To begin, the plot is complex and full of plenty of twists, all centered around the "MacGuffin" that is the blueprint for a catalytic converter. Curt and Ronald do not truly comprehend the significance of this invention in the grand scheme of things, not because they are unintelligent, but because they are criminals, not automotive engineers. What they do realize is that more than enough rich people seem interested in acquiring the blueprints for themselves, meaning that since Curt and Ronald have the only copy of these plans, they can try to work the angles to their profit. Sure, it seems highly unlikely that there would only be one set of these blueprints to go around, but these details are just distractions from what No Sudden Move is really about: a gritty noir flick with seedy characters aplenty doing dirty deeds of various sorts. This movie isn't a comedy, although there are moments where humor is inevitable given the circumstances. The best example of this comes by way of the near constant trials Matt endures. Matt is no saint, so his suffering is deserved. He has been unfaithful to his wife, Mary (Amy Seimetz), with a coworker named Paula (Frankie Shaw), who is the secretary to his boss at GM. When Curt, Ronald, and Charley show up in the Wertz household in masks one morning with guns and demand that Matt retrieve a "folder" from the safe of his boss, Matt complies. However, he has to get the combination to the safe from Paula, who isn't forthcoming due to an argument over Matt's failure to leave his wife. He rips the combination from her desk and races into his boss's office...only to discover that the plans aren't there. He foolishly tries to slip Charley false plans, which leads to a near fatal outcome for his family. So when Curt and Ronald take Matt to his boss's home in Ohio to retrieve the real plans, Matt threatens his boss, ultimately punching him while crying out, "I love my job, sir!" Maybe he gets just a little too into it...after all, who hasn't wanted to punch their scheming boss's daylights out at one point or another?
Double crosses are par for the course in No Sudden Move, reminding us of that age old adage, that there's "no honor among thieves". And there are no shortage of thieves in this story, literally, as the whole plot hinges on stealing the blueprints, and almost everyone seems in on it. Heck, even Curt fundamentally sets up a bidding war for them among the other auto execs, meaning that he's essentially selling out his original employer. His justification for this, however, comes after Charley prepares to execute the Wertz household once he returns at the behest of Jones over Matt's ruse. Incidentally, Jones is really working for a crime boss named Frank Capelli (Ray Liotta), whose wife, Vanessa (Julia Fox), just so happens to be having an affair with Ronald. Curt sees this escalation as a sign that he and Ronald are next to be screwed over, so he executes Charley; and Curt's probably right to be suspicious anyway. The real heart of No Sudden Move comes from the working relationship between Curt and Ronald. Neither men like one another much, but they find themselves in a position where it is mutually beneficial to work together to get the plans, especially since Capelli and another crime boss named Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke) appear to have put a bounty on them. I kind of lost count at the number of times one character turned on another at an opportune time in No Sudden Move, and yet it feels acceptable within the framework of the story. If someone gets screwed over here, it's only because they forgot that the world of this movie is one that favors the greedy and untrustworthy, not the moral or upright. Letting your guard down with almost anyone is an invitation to be stabbed in the back. This is even true for a vice squad detective named Joe Finney (Jon Hamm), who for all intents and purposes appears to be the only presence of law in the movie...but not of justice when all is said and done. It's a wonder that anyone ever trusts anybody in this movie. If there is a moral to No Sudden Move, it is delivered in a somewhat ham-fisted way courtesy of a pompous automobile manufacturing executive named Mike Lowen (Matt Damon), who buys the blueprints solely to bury them...an idea that was shared with virtually everyone else looking to bid on the prize. Why? Well, as the movie offers in its closing credits, it was an act of collusion to prevent including catalytic converters in automobiles, regardless of its role in reducing pollution, because such a feature would eat into the manufacturer's profits. So...more greed. And that everyone else is essentially dancing to the tune of men like Lowen--who says as much to Curt and Ronald at their handoff--No Sudden Move attempts to play the "big business is bad" card by the end to try to justify all of the chaos before it. But that wasn't what kept the audience interested in the first place. The mysterious prize that drives everyone to crime in No Sudden Move could be plans for a catalytic converter, and it could just as easily have been a treasure map to a pirate ship full of gold doubloons--it doesn't matter. What does matter is the fun of the ride, of seeing Curt and Ronald try to reach for that prize of something more...even if the effort is doomed from the start, because we all know that the game is rigged.
Recommended for: Fans of a throwback crime drama with echoes of noir classics like The Maltese Falcon. No Sudden Move may not feature an original plot--I know I've seen the whole "keep the family hostage while the dad goes and gets the valuable thing" bit before--but like a well-worn suit, its reliance on classic crime tropes makes it a familiar, even comforting, bit of noir nostalgia. (Not sure why everything seems to be shot with a fisheye lens, though...)
Double crosses are par for the course in No Sudden Move, reminding us of that age old adage, that there's "no honor among thieves". And there are no shortage of thieves in this story, literally, as the whole plot hinges on stealing the blueprints, and almost everyone seems in on it. Heck, even Curt fundamentally sets up a bidding war for them among the other auto execs, meaning that he's essentially selling out his original employer. His justification for this, however, comes after Charley prepares to execute the Wertz household once he returns at the behest of Jones over Matt's ruse. Incidentally, Jones is really working for a crime boss named Frank Capelli (Ray Liotta), whose wife, Vanessa (Julia Fox), just so happens to be having an affair with Ronald. Curt sees this escalation as a sign that he and Ronald are next to be screwed over, so he executes Charley; and Curt's probably right to be suspicious anyway. The real heart of No Sudden Move comes from the working relationship between Curt and Ronald. Neither men like one another much, but they find themselves in a position where it is mutually beneficial to work together to get the plans, especially since Capelli and another crime boss named Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke) appear to have put a bounty on them. I kind of lost count at the number of times one character turned on another at an opportune time in No Sudden Move, and yet it feels acceptable within the framework of the story. If someone gets screwed over here, it's only because they forgot that the world of this movie is one that favors the greedy and untrustworthy, not the moral or upright. Letting your guard down with almost anyone is an invitation to be stabbed in the back. This is even true for a vice squad detective named Joe Finney (Jon Hamm), who for all intents and purposes appears to be the only presence of law in the movie...but not of justice when all is said and done. It's a wonder that anyone ever trusts anybody in this movie. If there is a moral to No Sudden Move, it is delivered in a somewhat ham-fisted way courtesy of a pompous automobile manufacturing executive named Mike Lowen (Matt Damon), who buys the blueprints solely to bury them...an idea that was shared with virtually everyone else looking to bid on the prize. Why? Well, as the movie offers in its closing credits, it was an act of collusion to prevent including catalytic converters in automobiles, regardless of its role in reducing pollution, because such a feature would eat into the manufacturer's profits. So...more greed. And that everyone else is essentially dancing to the tune of men like Lowen--who says as much to Curt and Ronald at their handoff--No Sudden Move attempts to play the "big business is bad" card by the end to try to justify all of the chaos before it. But that wasn't what kept the audience interested in the first place. The mysterious prize that drives everyone to crime in No Sudden Move could be plans for a catalytic converter, and it could just as easily have been a treasure map to a pirate ship full of gold doubloons--it doesn't matter. What does matter is the fun of the ride, of seeing Curt and Ronald try to reach for that prize of something more...even if the effort is doomed from the start, because we all know that the game is rigged.
Recommended for: Fans of a throwback crime drama with echoes of noir classics like The Maltese Falcon. No Sudden Move may not feature an original plot--I know I've seen the whole "keep the family hostage while the dad goes and gets the valuable thing" bit before--but like a well-worn suit, its reliance on classic crime tropes makes it a familiar, even comforting, bit of noir nostalgia. (Not sure why everything seems to be shot with a fisheye lens, though...)